Michael definitely cannot act. And the closeup reaction shots sprinkled throughout were really stupid and cheesy. I still think the first was smart in that it didn't try to hang an attempt at an emotional story on his lack of acting talent.
The Animation didn't hold up as well as I had remembered. The 2D was fine but any time it was in a 3D environment or interacting with live action it didn't look great (except with Michael's gym bag... for some reason that looked pretty good). And obviously with it's age, the cgi was very bad. CG inflatable Wayne Knight was kinda scary lookin'.
Most of the live action cast being basketball players that can't really act was not super fun to watch. Wayne Knight and Bill Murray were enjoyable though (more so than any supporting cast in 2).
For whatever reason 2 made Lebron look like a complete ass (I dunno anything about him so I dunno how true that is but it's odd that given the chance at a fictional version that's what they'd go with) but 1 made Michael seem kinda cool as far as personality. He's good with poking fun at his baseball attempt, he's really chill with his kids, and he just seems overall pretty pleasant. Seems like a nice dude.
2 spent a lot of time building up and then paying off a really cheesy moral to the story. I don't know that 1 even really tried to have any sorta moral, just seemed interested in telling it's wacky story.
I don't really care about basketball but it was way more entertaining watching 1's looney but mostly followable game versus 2's silly videogame rules that don't matter and made scoring totally arbitrary. Obviously the scores are whatever and just there to drive the plot but 2's being as silly as it was just made it way less interesting in my opinion.
I'm fully aware that it might just be nostalgia but I still enjoyed 1. 2 absolutely sucked.